27.02.11

Astronomers Make Extraordinarily Detailed Map of the Universe's Dark Matter

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have made one of the most detailed dark matter maps ever, taking advantage of the dark matter's own gravitational effects to bring it into the light. The map suggests massive galaxy clusters may have formed earlier
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James Webb Telescope Project Project Reviewed and Reorganized In Wake of Massive Cost Overruns

The James Webb Space Telescope threatens to eat the budgets of other missions Huge cost overruns caused by mismanagement of the James Webb Space Telescope are delaying NASA's keystone science
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Orbiting 3-D Printers Could Print Out New Space Stations

Now that we've begun 3D printing anything and everything here on Earth, it's time
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Construction Begins on America's First Commercial Spaceship Factory

Who says America isn't a manufacturing economy anymore? The country has already dedicated her first commercial spaceport,
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Astronomers Find Massive, Previously Undetected Gamma Radiation Bubbles Adorning the Milky Way

A Harvard astronomer and his team have turned up something quite big while running publicly available data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, and by big we mean both in scientific
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New Climate Models Predict Hurricane Seasons Years in Advance

It's still hard to know just how big an Atlantic hurricane is going to get or where it might make landfall until just days before it strikes, but meteorologists have long been able to predict with fair certainty how many hurricanes will be spawned in the next hurricane
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Robonaut 2 Sentenced to Additional Month In Crate

With shuttle launch postponed, our hearts go out to a passenger NASA has just announced it will postpone the 39th and final launch of space shuttle Discovery until November 30 at the earliest, after a hydrogen gas leak stalled this afternoon's scheduled liftoff. Meanwhile,
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New Web Tool Shows Exact Effects of Potential Asteroid Impacts

Asteroids and comets come in all shapes and sizes-from small pebbles, to larger SUV-sized fragments, to massive asteroids like Ceres, which has a diameter of about 621 miles. Much of the asteroid material that crosses paths with the Earth burns up when it enters the atmosphere.
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Now Discovery Has a Fuel Leak; Delayed Another 48 Hours At Least

Perhaps its sentimentality that's making Discovery stall its 39th and final mission. Scheduled to launch at 3:04 p.m. today after four days of delays for reasons ranging from helium and nitrogen leaks to voltage
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MIT's Martian Genome Project Will Search for Alien DNA on the Red Planet

When hypothesizing about life that may exist elsewhere in the universe, the tendency is to visualize something far different from life here on earth. But here in our galactic neighborhood, a team of MIT researchers argues, life it just as likely related to us. Following
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VISTA Telescope Reveals Tarantula Nebula in Brilliant Detail

The ESO's VISTA telescope has released a magnificent picture of the Tarantula Nebula in our neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. The image was taken at the start of VISTA's Magellanic Cloud survey, covering 184 square degrees of sky (about a thousand times
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Scientists confirm the first direct photo of an exoplanet

See that little dot in the upper left corner? It is a planet orbiting a sun-like star. We know of a few hundred planets like this, but this one is special -- we now know it's the first one to have its picture properly taken from Earth. The adaptive optics
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Martian Environment Is Ideally Suited For Crop Farming, Study Says

If we ever decide to colonize Mars, it might be fairly simple to grow crops in that red soil, according to a
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The ESO Turns Its Massive Laser Beam on the Heavens (for Science)

We are not at war with an alien race from the center of the Milky Way, but if we were, this is exactly what we would want it to look like. Snapped at the European Southern Observatory's Paranal Observatory --
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Liquid mirror breakthrough could make state-of-the-art optics cheap

A $136 million Earth-based telescope using brand new adaptive optics just trumped Hubble's deep space image clarity three-fold, but such high tech optics aren't just reserved for high-dollar observatories. A breakthrough in deformable liquid mirror technology
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Pair of Telescopes Captures Supermassive Black Hole Eruption

At the heart of M87, the Virgo A galaxy, is one of the biggest black holes ever seen - about 6 billion times more massive than the sun. Scientists working with the Chandra X-ray telescope and the Very Large Array have compiled this nice new image of its insatiable appetite
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ESO's newest exoplanet-seeking 'scope brings home its first images

The European Southern Observatory's newest telescope has collected its first images of the cosmos, capturing some stunning images of the Tarantula Nebula and making a good case for the virtues
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With Robotic Cargo Ferry Launch, Europe Will Become an Official Supplier to the ISS This Month

The ESA's newest Automated Transfer Vehicle--ATV-2, otherwise known as Johannes Kepler--is loaded up and primed for its February 15th launch to the International Space Station, marking a several significant milestones for the European Space Agency and its contribution
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Who Owns the Moon's Water? Future Moon Mining Missions May Face Legal Disputes

Would-be moon miners will need good lawyers if they want to keep the lunar resources they're harvesting, according to space policy experts. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 appears to permit extraction of lunar water and other resources, but it's not clear
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In Case of Asteroid Threat, Deploy Tug-Sats and Heavy Rockets, Apollo Astronaut Says

As evidenced by NASA's confirmation last week of an asteroid collision observed by Hubble, there are plenty of objects careening around the solar system
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Born Again Rocketeer's DIY Crayon Rockets

Who says rockets should just be black and white? Commercial spaceflight may
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Stars Can Teach Us a Thing or Two about Manufacturing Carbon Nanotubes, NASA Finds

Efficient space-born recipe requires no metal Carbon nanotubes may push future innovations
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Chandra Illuminates a Different Kind of Supernova, Re-Evaluating a Principal Cosmic Measuring Stick

If there?s one thing that?s true about all science ? and especially science of the cosmos ? it?s
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Saturn's Moon Spews Ice In Magnificent Plumes

And Cassini was there to see it NASA's Cassini spacecraft has repeatedly taken the plunge into
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NASA Tests Handy-Man Space Robots For Orbital Repairs

With cuts in the manned space program and the impending retirement of the Space Shuttle, NASA
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NASA's Project M Puts Scientists' Avatars On the Moon

NASA can put humanoids on the Moon in just 1000
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The First Sushi In Space, Caught on Video

In December, Soichi Noguchi promised
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On DARPA's List: a Real-Time, 3-D Picture of The Earth Beneath Our Feet

DARPA wants to know what's happening in the skies overhead and seeks
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Iran Launches Turtles Into Space, Plans Satellite Mission Soon

Boldly taking turtles where few turtles have gone before, Iran launched
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Carbon Crystals Harder Than Diamond Found In Finnish Meteorite

Diamond may remain the preferred material for wedding rings, Lil' Wayne's birthday
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